Monday, July 18, 2011

This gaizappreciation pic is superneat but unfortunately, not very Indian at all. We can know it is not Indian from a number of salient nonIndian features.

The women are white and Indian women can’t be white because they are brown. Indian women are just like you and me expect they are brown yougaiz. The only time Indian women are not brown is when they turn white in order to become awesome wifelets or to get job that involves carrying a laptop and swishing one's hair in dramatic manner.

While all Indian women are overwhelmingly heterosexual, it is not part of Indian culture to blatantly advertise one's female heterosexuality by putting gentshead pictures on the wall, as this is a sign of loosecharacterbehaviors which ultimately leads to the decline of humanity and is also been known to be a strong contributing factor to the hole in the ozone layer.

Indian women do not wear skirts because they only wear Indian clothing which apart from being very Indian, forms a magical forcefield that deflects and prevents sexual molestation, which is something the jeanspant cannot do.

The men on the wall are mostly white and Indian women only like Indian men. I feel like this is the right time to clarify that this dude is actually Indian.

stolen from somewhere on jezebel.com

Here we can see him proving his Indianness and manliness by doing traditional Indian dance of Indianness and Manliness.

2. My collection' Insects are Just like You and Me Except Some of them have Wings' is now available as an ebook and you can buy it here, here and here. This is an Indian thing because some people from other countries have said it is.

Since this blog post started with a very nonIndian thing, it seems appropriate to end on a nonIndian note, specifically what Ghulam Nabi Azad said recently about homosexuality. The illustrious Wikipedia tells me that he allegedly said that homosexuality was a disease, which is not that interesting because a lot of people like to say that. But he also allegedly said that homosexuality was ‘an import from Western Nations’, which you have to admit is so Indian like pistagreen walls. Shockingly, our illustrious health minister was allegedly misquoted out of context yougaiz, which seems to happen a lot when people talk about homosexuality.

I read about this on some illustrious Indian news sites and because I am stupid, I read the comments that followed the article. And I have to say that the idea that homosexuality is a Western thing is certainly a very popular notion, with an alarming number of people being very keen on drawing parallels between homosexuality and that other horrific Western import, feminism. Apparently the two have a lot in common, the biggest commonality being that they are not Indian. One illustrious individual once informed me that they were both CIA plots which I think is the same as being not Indian.

Then I thought about how there are certain Western imports which we take very active steps to appropriate. Like M Night Shyamalan. Remember when he got Oscared and we as a nation sort of fell all over ourselves saying that it was his Indianness that made him win? Isn't that like so embarrassing now yougaiz, especially since people don't seem to like him as much anymore? Appropriating people who win a Nobel Prize or awesome First World accolades in general is not easy. In some cases, the people haven't lived in India for eleventytwelvty years or they are like 'um, I'm not Indian' and we're like 'Oh yes you ARE!! AND WE'RE GOING TO PROVE IT !!111'If homosexuality or feminism won an Oscar or something, maybe all the haters would stop hating, at least in a kneejerk sort of way. On the other hand, during the ensuing appropriation process we may have to prove that India invented homosexuality and women. That might be really hard yougaiz.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Namaskaram Viewers! This blog post is little late but whatever. This blog post title is another one of those wonderful things sometimes found in old school/college autograph/slam books. This snazzy little thing is something I saw on a notebook cover.

A Hindoo pen is apparently some kind of antique pen and not a pen made out of Hindoos, which is disappointing because I think a pen made out of Hindoos would be superneat to have and show off to people also. Speaking of Hindoos, Out of Print magazine's mythology-inspired issue is out and includes a reprint of my story The Dolphin King. Speaking of dolphins, I would like to talk about some things I thought were interesting from my little corner of the world. They actually have nothing to do with dolphins and I’m sorry I misled you like that yougaiz.

We have a flyover and a Marry Brown which is why my templetown is now, and I quote “just like America”. The Marry Brown outlet here has pictures of massive white children on the wall. These massive white children are like the looming threat of American consumerism overpowering Indian culture and the everlingering presence of colonialism in Modern India. They are also like having oversized Children of the Corn staring down at you while you are trying to eat buffalo wings.

There is a marked absence of Shakeela and other sex padam posters which were always present in large and startling numbers in this smalltempletown when I was engster. And when I say ‘marked absence’ I mean I only saw one and someone was drying cow dung on it. Now there is marked profusion of posters for Improve Spoken English courses which I guess is kind of like sex padam because so many sex padams seemed to be called My English Teacher or My Tuition Teacher and for something totally different, My English Tuition Teacher.

And now I am going to talk about SlutWalks because this just wouldn’t be a chickblog if I didn’t talk about SlutWalks yougaiz. The SlutWalk in Delhi had interesting and completely predictable effects on certain sections of our illustrious society. Some people who had hitherto been trying to wrap their heads around the novel idea that one should not call women sluts suddenly became superconfused and excited because the word ‘slut’ is very exciting. Other sections of society made the exceedingly clever observation that if women themselves are parading themselves as sluts, then why won’t they be treated as sluts? The aforementioned superconfused contingency took a great deal of comfort from this observation and now these two sections of society are like bee eff effs yougaiz. The ‘SlutWalk joke’ was born and quickly distinguished itself as a very unique breed of humor where peeps got extremely emo and upset if you did not laugh at these jokes, even if they were mind-blowingly unfunny. People also defended general assholic behavior by either saying they had a uterus or they knew someone who had a uterus which is not that interesting when you consider that this is pretty much a template defense for…everything.

I have to say that this adorably bizarro behavior reminded me of the reactions that often happen when you make the mistake of telling certain people that you have been sexually harassed or as we prefer to call it here, “eve-teased”. Ideally, one should never speak of these things because one, it is very Western-y and feminist-y when women talk about “eve-teasing”, especially when they insist on calling it sexual molestation or sexual harassment, thus making the whole thing very sexual and sexy. Secondly, saying that you were groped or grabbed means that you were basically asking for it in some way- for instance, maybe you were walking down the road or riding the bus or breathing. I think we can agree that many women, especially in India, are guilty of breathing. Thirdly, and this seems to be a more modern brand of thought, issues only become all gross and issue-y when you refuse to ‘see the humor’ and decide to make them an issue. This is why we should all start laughing at rape jokes because laughing at rape means it no longer becomes an issue and the last thing we need is for rape to be an issue yougaiz.

Anywaiz, all of this what-the-fuckery reminded me that people say some really bizarre shit to explain sexual harassment. Here are some of the tiptop wtf reasons I have heard for why women get “eve-teased”

1.You Speak EnglishIn my corner of the world, ‘English padam’ means sex padam, so I think that means that on some level, English means sex. So if you are a woman and you say something in English, you are basically saying sex sex sex sex sex sex sex which is possibly what incites men to grab your breasts on public transportation. This of course does not apply to dudes because dudes who speak English are awesome yougaiz and everyone wants to be their friend and no one wants to grab their tits, which must be superconvenient when you want to ride the bus and stuff like that.

2.You Are UnmarriedMarriage is the best way to fend off sexual harassment because you know what happens when you get married to a dude? This magic force field grows all around you and if a guy tries to grope you, the force field makes the gropingdude's penis fall off. Seriously. This is why married women never get sexually harassed. Ever.

3.Men Are Like That OnlyRape is just one of those things that all men are naturally inclined to do. Or something. I don't really understand that but thankfully Scott Adams does and he wrote the Dilbert comics and Dilbert is funny yougaiz. According to certain Tamil movies, this is another reason why women should marry men. Because it cures the inherently rapey tendencies all men have which the woman was trying to avoid in the first place which is why she gets married to a dude who by default has rapey tendencies because he is a dude. Or something. Sometimes Tamil movies are confusing yougaiz and you get the feeling that Scott Adams made them.

4.You Are ArrogantFemale arrogance in general is apparently at the root of most bad things in the world today. For instance, that whole Maoist problem that is happening somewhere over there is really all about Arundhati Roy and how she’s like so arrogant yougaiz. I’m pretty sure that bird flu was created and perpetuated by arrogant chickens.

5.You Have No Respect For Indian CultureThis is actually a deadly combination of female arrogance and speaking English, two of the most notoriously disrespectful disrespectations of Indian culture evar, with wearing pants coming in a close third. This is why women who wear traditional Indian dress are never sexually harassed evarevar. Also it is worth noting that if you speak English, wear pants and are a dude, you are #winning and also bravely upholding the tenets of Indian culture with your English and your pants.

And now, at the risk of showing further disrespect for Indian culture, I would like to wish a happy belated Canada Day to Canada, thank you for keeping it real and being so Canadian yougaiz. In your belated honor, I would like to dedicate musical numbers-

About Me

Kuzhali Manickavel is the author of the short story collections 'Insects Are Just like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings' and 'Things We Found During the Autopsy', both available from Blaft Publications. She also has an email id and it goes like kuzhali (dot) ehm (at) gmail (dot) com